10 ms·

Internet Archive's big battle with music publishers ends in settlement

362 points by coloneltcb 1y ago

josefritzishere 1y ago
The inability to prove damages normally is the end of a suit. But there is something magic in copyright where judges seem to waive that requirement. This special dispensation seems to be extralegal, and limited to where it serves large copyright holders.
- Anduia 1y ago
  See the Copyright Act of 1976. That battle was lost long ago and judges can't ignore statutary damages.
  - stonogo 1y ago
    The lesson of the 2020s is that judges can do whatever the hell they want.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  [flagged]
ilamont 1y ago
> Days before the settlement was announced, record labels had indicated that everyone but the Internet Archive and its founder, Brewster Kahle, had agreed to sign a joint settlement Does IA have an independent board of directors? If so, why is the board and its members never mentioned in the copyright lawsuits? Most other organizations (nonprofit and corporate) with independent boards would be heavily involved in any major litigation and issuing statements as developments warrant. I don't see that here - the IA blog post is by a director of library services. The about page (https://blog.archive.org/about/ https://blog.archive.org/about/) mentions nothing about a board.
- Kwpolska 1y ago
  Is it really that important or significant? This is the board: https://archive.org/about/bios https://archive.org/about/bios
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- tiahura 1y ago
  IA has a board page. My guess is the other members are independent in the sense they have don’t have material financial ties. However, you can draw your own conclusions as to whether they would ever tell management “no.” The issue is that nonprofits don’t have shareholders that can hold boards accountable. As seen w/ OpenAI, sometimes big donors can bully (or eject) the board, and that probably needs to happen with IA.
badlibrarian 1y ago
A search for "Internet Archive rumors" returns a copy of Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" on my first page of results. Playable in browser and downloadable in high-quality lossless format. The book lawsuit was over current titles (not really archival and preservation), and the record lawsuit wasn't really about the rare 78s, it was about the modern Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney records that somehow slipped in. And their refusal to follow the modern law that they themselves celebrated that made what they're trying to do (including downloads) explicitly legal. But that law prohibited fundraising, and they couldn't resist tweeting out links to Frank Sinatra records with a big banner on top asking for money. In both lawsuits the discovery revealed tech debt and sloppy process at the Archive that made it impossible for them to argue on behalf of the future we all want.
- crtasm 1y ago
  What's the URL? Curious if it's still valid and if it were uploaded by some random user or one of the archiving projects.
  - nofriend 1y ago
    Here's one: https://archive.org/details/FleetwoodMacRumours https://archive.org/details/FleetwoodMacRumours
  - dghlsakjg 1y ago
    For extra awesome use their Winamp clone. It really whips the llama's ass. https://archive.org/details/fleetwood_mac-1977-rumours?webamp=default https://archive.org/details/fleetwood_mac-1977-rumours?webam...
    - crtasm 1y ago
      Uploaded by user "Ultra Lo Fi Experimental" who appears to be putting lots of big name releases on there, I can't understand why they would do this.
      - 1y ago
tokai 1y ago
There is so much pirated material on Internet Archive. They have so many movies with titles directly from the warez groups. I don't think they are done getting in trouble sadly.
- Palomides 1y ago
  it's frustrating that so many people use the internet archive as pirate file hosting for things that are easy to find elsewhere (legally or otherwise) it jeopardizes all of their other missions and access to otherwise inaccessible media
  - 999900000999 1y ago
    It really needs to be at least 2 different organizations. Preserve the internet, store old websites. Everything else. The whole "Emergency Lending Library" situation was just strange. A random non government organization can just declare copyright unfair and distribute whatever they want ? And they acted surprised when the book industry reacted ?
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      > The whole "Emergency Lending Library" situation was just strange. That was adjudicated years ago, and has nothing to do with the case at hand.
      - gs17 1y ago
        It's related, it demonstrates the IA's attitude toward copyright and how it's already gotten them into trouble. The huge amount of pirate content seems to largely fly under the radar, but the Library was advertising that they're not going to respect copyright and it puts the website archives at risk.
        TimorousBestie 1y ago
        > The huge amount of pirate content seems to largely fly under the radar, That’s literally how copyright enforcement works in the United States, it’s not specific to IA. Every user-submitted content publishing site is rife with piracy. > but the Library was advertising that they're not going to respect copyright A gross misreading of their stated intentions. > and it puts the website archives at risk. The archives are probably also not fair use in the present legal environment. They just happen to not to contain anything valuable enough for a big media company to get litigious. Yet.
ethagnawl 1y ago
> He suggested that perhaps labels just "don't like the Internet Archive's way of pushing the envelope on copyright and fair use." This seems to be the whole ballgame. They're (UMG, specifically) doing the same to YouTuber Rick Beato. His music theory/analysis/reaction videos are very careful to abide by the rules of _fair use_ and, yet, UMG is still drowning him in copyright violation claims. He's had to hire representation to deal with the backlog of claims that are (extremely likely) all bogus and _hope_ to keep his videos and channel online. On one hand, their behavior is baffling, as I've streamed and purchased music from these companies I would not have otherwise because of Beato's channel. On the other, it's completely unsurprising, as they stand to _have their cake and eat it too_ by introducing chokepoints for _all_ access to their music (in theory, anyways) and suing anyone in the hopes of inking these bullshit settlements with anyone who dares get within a few miles of their moat.
- Palomides 1y ago
  it's not really the same as putting snippets of media in a youtube video... the internet archive has, loosely, three categories of stuff: * out of copyright (totally legal) * copyright but abandoned (not legal but nobody cares and is good for society) * copyright and actively being sold right now (not legal and huge exposure to lawsuits) modern pop media movies, books, audio are not uploaded to the internet archive in their entirety under any kind of fair use unless you're a copyright abolitionist taking a very expansive view on the term
  - NemoNobody 1y ago
    That's why exactly it tho - normal ppl that are not the non-profit with very limited resources and staff, upload the infringing content - it's not even the IA fault that they are hosting it and placing such a responsibility on the IA to polofe the.archive - isn't what that is. The recording companies should have gone after the individual uploaders or this one as always bullshit - the record labels themselves can just upload a bunch music and screw the IA - it's supposed to be a copy of the whole internet. This was just to essentially own the IA, which they effectively do now - bc it was easier for them to take over the IA, than to actually protect their content creators by going after the actual distributors, the uploaders. Obviously, they broke tho Yeah... nothing done against those companies is actually "wrong" - thats a grey area when corpos suck as bad as they do.
hsuduebc2 1y ago
Oh the good ol' greed. They surely deserve the piracy.
- NemoNobody 1y ago
  This fall will be the first time since Uni that I download all music released the whole year. I don't even know what I'll do with it - files for music in 25 - on MY DEVICE, I'll prolly just give it all away - I think we should bring back "mixtape" jump drives (wow so much of that is ancient) bc with all the TBs we can fit on like a penny sized drive - pfft, yeah we all could just bring one drive around with us, and be done paying for all the musical media that exists already - forever. Sharing is caring
cramcgrab 1y ago
Seeing with ai there’s not gonna be a need for copyright and patents in the future. So easy to invent new stuff now.
- NemoNobody 1y ago
  I just saw your comment as I was leaving here - you are right I'm just begining to realize exactly what you stated, despite my own ranting AI, automation and all without actually working with any LLMs for several months - jumped into a smaller project last week and I realized that essentially none of the limits that I thought I had were even there anymore. Weeks of work and actual human activity down to days - days of working, down to minutes. I'm trying to retrain how I think - otherwise, the sub 4 year old future creators will be so far ahead of me. Haha, it's gonna be like building in Fortnite - Millennials had to go no build. Co-Creation WITH an AI - it's actually a huge shift, then it's as you said, so easy to build new stuff.
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
Isn't the DMCA already supposed to cover this type of situation? I can't tell from this article what was actually going on, unfortunately.
- badlibrarian 1y ago
  Indeed they could've structured the whole project to give them DMCA protection but they chose not to. They truly thought copyright didn't apply. Then doubled down when pressed, just like the book lawsuit. They had a number of ways to avoid this problem entirely and the fact that they didn't yet again brings Brewster's judgement into question. He's a sweet guy but clearly not an operations or business guy. He's at retirement age and has an opportunity to do the right thing. Hopefully clearing these lawsuits will open up some options.
- braiamp 1y ago
  They have exceptions to several categories of IP https://archive.org/about/dmca.php https://archive.org/about/dmca.php Also, they have a policy already https://help.archive.org/help/rights/ https://help.archive.org/help/rights/ Unless you are claiming that they don't follow it, and this case, nor the one before, rights holders included in their cases that they tried to report them via those.
ayaros 1y ago
I guess things could be worse? The Internet Archive is too precious of a resource for humanity to lose. I still fear its days are numbered. I don't think non-technical people appreciate it, or are even aware of its existence, in the same way as Wikipedia.
- miki123211 1y ago
  I'm a technical person, and not a fan of copyright by any means, and I don't appreaciate it either. To be clear, I appreciate the concept of an "Internet Archive", but the current organization / execution / management is absolutely atrocious.
  - NemoNobody 1y ago
    Nah, it's like the wild West - I'll hold IA accountable ONLY for CP - ONLY. If corpos want there shit off the site - they should have to send someone to take that down - every single times the whole process, always on them. The IA is just like a big box with a copy of everything in another box. Boxes aren't bad bc I put something bad into a box - this is a little more nuanced than that
  - remus 1y ago
    > To be clear, I appreciate the concept of an "Internet Archive", but the current organization / execution / management is absolutely atrocious. A pretty harsh take imo. I think they achieve a huge amount with a relatively small team and tiny budget.
  - ayaros 1y ago
    I just meant I appreciate it as resource for all kinds of information, and as an invaluable backup of the web. The internet should be a repository of all human knowledge and culture; all information and media should (at least eventually) be free as part of the common heritage of mankind. Sites like Wikipedia and IA are a partial realization of this dream. They aren't perfect, for sure, but we need them, and we need more sites like them. I fear too many take these things for granted.
  - mwcampbell 1y ago
NoNameHaveI 1y ago
There's an easy solution to this: just move hosting to and register in the Marshall Islands where there is effectively no copyright enforcement. It is difficult to threaten someone with a lawsuit when the law they cite is not enforced.
- criddell 1y ago
  Moving the IA to the Marshall Islands is your idea of an easy solution?
- roywiggins 1y ago
  The Internet Archive has substantial physical presence in the United States: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bay-area-warehouse-internet-archive-19858332.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bay-area-warehouse-inter...
- ronsor 1y ago
  The Marshall Islands does not even have a copyright law.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Ha I'm sure their internet connectivity is excellent. And even if it was, you think a country with a population of 42k is somehow immune to political pressure?
- RiverCrochet 1y ago
  The forthcoming "Block BEARD" act in the U.S. will soon enable rights holders to apply for foreign sites to be blocked (at the IP level I believe) on piracy grounds. But hosting it there long-term would still have value even if U.S. users couldn't easily get to it. Access would be legal when copyrights expire and everything becomes public domain. Therefore, above, long-term means long-long-long-term: enough time for all U.S. copyrights to expire under the current law, which would be about 250 years. This of course assumes no U.S. copyright reform, no expansion of the current copyright law, and that U.S. law/authority/power continues to exist in its current form. Do you think such an archive could be kept alive that long? Here are some potential issues: - Literal piracy (e.g. pirates coming to shore) - Storage of data for 250 years (metal rusts, dvds melt/warp, paper is not data dense) - Climate change - Undersea cable cuts - Nuclear war - Technological evolution (will networking and storage look the same in 50, 100, 200 years)
pessimizer 1y ago
If I had to guess, I'd say that the settlement was a lot closer to $41K than one would think, and that's why it's being kept quiet. Otherwise, the labels saw themselves either losing a famous copyright case in the age of LLM threats to copyright, or winning a famous copyright case in an awkward fashion that made people far less sympathetic to them. People are on copyright holders' side in the battle with LLMs. Either winning or losing this case would be poison.
- NemoNobody 1y ago
  Haha - only people that don't have experience with AI. When the NYT sued OpenAI - I emailed the Times that if it's between the Times or AI, we don't need the NYT anymore. I want UBI from the AI companies - if they can provide its bc they actually did deliver something that might as well be a god - how they get there - I will forgive, soooo much, almost anything if you think about what AGI actually is. If I were Sam, I'd never stop talking about it either - for most people, ChatGPT is already "alive" more than can understand that it isn't. Haha, in a few years, ask a Gen Alpha if they'd give up AI - fpr copyright law, haha
- badlibrarian 1y ago
  The settlement was beating them down and getting them to remove millions of items and police things going forward. Things are still disappearing left and right. Huge damage was done to the culture by Brewster's ill-advised, hardcore stance that played right into the hands of corporate interests.
qingcharles 1y ago
Seems like a lot of stuff is being purged from (at least) the search index lately? https://www.reddit.com/r/internetarchive/comments/1nk4pwt/cant_find_or_search_for_archived_cds_on_internet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/internetarchive/comments/1nk4pwt/ca...
textfiles 1y ago
Hope everyone's enjoying the Internet Archive!
- badlibrarian 1y ago
  [flagged]
djoldman 1y ago
I'm interested to know if last year's book publisher settlement cost will be reflected in IA's public filings. I assume they'll file a 990 in november: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943242767 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943...
- ilamont 1y ago
  Thanks for sharing that. 2023 data: Revenue: $23,678,074 Expenses: $32,674,667 Net Income: -$8,996,593 Net Assets: -$3,530,018 Liabilities and expenses have likely grown in the last 18 months. IA may have gained some additional donations, but a lot of people are turned off by Kahle's doubling down on courtroom fights with copyright owners, even if he takes $0 in salary. No organization can keep this up unless there is an ace in its back pocket.
gojomo 1y ago
Imminent Death of the Archive Averted, Film at 11.
MomsAVoxell 1y ago
Why isn't the Internet Archive a function of the Library of Congress, anyone know? Seems to me that IA should be very well funded by us all.
- SXX 1y ago
  Because we don't want it be shutdown because some political figure dislike that it archived something they don't like?
  - MomsAVoxell 1y ago
    But isn’t the purpose of the Library of Congress to avoid that scenario?
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      If that’s the purpose of the Library of Congress, they failed.
elcapi_092 1y ago
Ajjdem
Aeolun 1y ago
I’m not funding them just so they can decide to give my money to Sony. There’s much more direct and beneficial ways of doing so. Seriously, if you are going to challenge this kind of shit actually challenge it.
KnuthIsGod 1y ago
The Internet Archive has unfortunately turned into a cross between a poorly organised archive and a pirate site.
- koolala 1y ago
  How do they financially benefit from pirate material?
  - badlibrarian 1y ago
    By putting banner ads at the top asking for donations. This very lawsuit was provoked by tweeting out links to Frank Sinatra records as part of a fund raising campaign. Also, the existence of pirated material fuels the growth of the site. Few people go there for the cool weird stuff. Find something old and amazing and blogged about: 12 views, 10 from bots. Now search for Nintendo games.
Bender 1y ago
How does IA get picked on but YT does not? I can type in any music artist or album I can think of with the word playlist and get a full playlist. With exception of the YT channels owned by the publisher or artist I am highly skeptical YT own even 1% of the music on their site. Most of the music I run across seems to be just random YT user accounts and the music has been there for years. For the record I am not complaining, it just seems very biased to me as in IA probably do not have as many lawyers, as much bureaucracy, connections and money as YT making them an easier target but I am just guessing if that is the reason.
- bstsb 1y ago
  because youtube has Content ID. they faced the wrath of copyright holders years back, when they were small and lacked real profit, but now pretty much all videos with music in them are automatically claimed - so the big labels get money
  - Bender 1y ago
    Hrmm so maybe IA could implement this type of identification.

362 points by coloneltcb 1y ago

The inability to prove damages normally is the end of a suit. But there is something magic in copyright where judges seem to waive that requirement. This special dispensation seems to be extralegal, and limited to where it serves large copyright holders.

Anduia 1y ago
See the Copyright Act of 1976. That battle was lost long ago and judges can't ignore statutary damages.
- stonogo 1y ago
  The lesson of the 2020s is that judges can do whatever the hell they want.
ToucanLoucan 1y ago
[flagged]

ilamont 1y ago

> Days before the settlement was announced, record labels had indicated that everyone but the Internet Archive and its founder, Brewster Kahle, had agreed to sign a joint settlement Does IA have an independent board of directors? If so, why is the board and its members never mentioned in the copyright lawsuits? Most other organizations (nonprofit and corporate) with independent boards would be heavily involved in any major litigation and issuing statements as developments warrant. I don't see that here - the IA blog post is by a director of library services. The about page (https://blog.archive.org/about/ https://blog.archive.org/about/) mentions nothing about a board.

Kwpolska 1y ago
Is it really that important or significant? This is the board: https://archive.org/about/bios https://archive.org/about/bios
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
tiahura 1y ago
IA has a board page. My guess is the other members are independent in the sense they have don’t have material financial ties. However, you can draw your own conclusions as to whether they would ever tell management “no.” The issue is that nonprofits don’t have shareholders that can hold boards accountable. As seen w/ OpenAI, sometimes big donors can bully (or eject) the board, and that probably needs to happen with IA.

badlibrarian 1y ago

A search for "Internet Archive rumors" returns a copy of Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" on my first page of results. Playable in browser and downloadable in high-quality lossless format. The book lawsuit was over current titles (not really archival and preservation), and the record lawsuit wasn't really about the rare 78s, it was about the modern Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney records that somehow slipped in. And their refusal to follow the modern law that they themselves celebrated that made what they're trying to do (including downloads) explicitly legal. But that law prohibited fundraising, and they couldn't resist tweeting out links to Frank Sinatra records with a big banner on top asking for money. In both lawsuits the discovery revealed tech debt and sloppy process at the Archive that made it impossible for them to argue on behalf of the future we all want.

crtasm 1y ago
What's the URL? Curious if it's still valid and if it were uploaded by some random user or one of the archiving projects.
- nofriend 1y ago
  Here's one: https://archive.org/details/FleetwoodMacRumours https://archive.org/details/FleetwoodMacRumours
- dghlsakjg 1y ago
  For extra awesome use their Winamp clone. It really whips the llama's ass. https://archive.org/details/fleetwood_mac-1977-rumours?webamp=default https://archive.org/details/fleetwood_mac-1977-rumours?webam...
  - crtasm 1y ago
    Uploaded by user "Ultra Lo Fi Experimental" who appears to be putting lots of big name releases on there, I can't understand why they would do this.
    - 1y ago

tokai 1y ago

There is so much pirated material on Internet Archive. They have so many movies with titles directly from the warez groups. I don't think they are done getting in trouble sadly.

Palomides 1y ago
it's frustrating that so many people use the internet archive as pirate file hosting for things that are easy to find elsewhere (legally or otherwise) it jeopardizes all of their other missions and access to otherwise inaccessible media
- 999900000999 1y ago
  It really needs to be at least 2 different organizations. Preserve the internet, store old websites. Everything else. The whole "Emergency Lending Library" situation was just strange. A random non government organization can just declare copyright unfair and distribute whatever they want ? And they acted surprised when the book industry reacted ?
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    > The whole "Emergency Lending Library" situation was just strange. That was adjudicated years ago, and has nothing to do with the case at hand.
    - gs17 1y ago
      It's related, it demonstrates the IA's attitude toward copyright and how it's already gotten them into trouble. The huge amount of pirate content seems to largely fly under the radar, but the Library was advertising that they're not going to respect copyright and it puts the website archives at risk.
      - TimorousBestie 1y ago
        > The huge amount of pirate content seems to largely fly under the radar, That’s literally how copyright enforcement works in the United States, it’s not specific to IA. Every user-submitted content publishing site is rife with piracy. > but the Library was advertising that they're not going to respect copyright A gross misreading of their stated intentions. > and it puts the website archives at risk. The archives are probably also not fair use in the present legal environment. They just happen to not to contain anything valuable enough for a big media company to get litigious. Yet.

ethagnawl 1y ago

> He suggested that perhaps labels just "don't like the Internet Archive's way of pushing the envelope on copyright and fair use." This seems to be the whole ballgame. They're (UMG, specifically) doing the same to YouTuber Rick Beato. His music theory/analysis/reaction videos are very careful to abide by the rules of _fair use_ and, yet, UMG is still drowning him in copyright violation claims. He's had to hire representation to deal with the backlog of claims that are (extremely likely) all bogus and _hope_ to keep his videos and channel online. On one hand, their behavior is baffling, as I've streamed and purchased music from these companies I would not have otherwise because of Beato's channel. On the other, it's completely unsurprising, as they stand to _have their cake and eat it too_ by introducing chokepoints for _all_ access to their music (in theory, anyways) and suing anyone in the hopes of inking these bullshit settlements with anyone who dares get within a few miles of their moat.

Palomides 1y ago
it's not really the same as putting snippets of media in a youtube video... the internet archive has, loosely, three categories of stuff: * out of copyright (totally legal) * copyright but abandoned (not legal but nobody cares and is good for society) * copyright and actively being sold right now (not legal and huge exposure to lawsuits) modern pop media movies, books, audio are not uploaded to the internet archive in their entirety under any kind of fair use unless you're a copyright abolitionist taking a very expansive view on the term
- NemoNobody 1y ago
  That's why exactly it tho - normal ppl that are not the non-profit with very limited resources and staff, upload the infringing content - it's not even the IA fault that they are hosting it and placing such a responsibility on the IA to polofe the.archive - isn't what that is. The recording companies should have gone after the individual uploaders or this one as always bullshit - the record labels themselves can just upload a bunch music and screw the IA - it's supposed to be a copy of the whole internet. This was just to essentially own the IA, which they effectively do now - bc it was easier for them to take over the IA, than to actually protect their content creators by going after the actual distributors, the uploaders. Obviously, they broke tho Yeah... nothing done against those companies is actually "wrong" - thats a grey area when corpos suck as bad as they do.

hsuduebc2 1y ago

Oh the good ol' greed. They surely deserve the piracy.

NemoNobody 1y ago
This fall will be the first time since Uni that I download all music released the whole year. I don't even know what I'll do with it - files for music in 25 - on MY DEVICE, I'll prolly just give it all away - I think we should bring back "mixtape" jump drives (wow so much of that is ancient) bc with all the TBs we can fit on like a penny sized drive - pfft, yeah we all could just bring one drive around with us, and be done paying for all the musical media that exists already - forever. Sharing is caring

cramcgrab 1y ago

Seeing with ai there’s not gonna be a need for copyright and patents in the future. So easy to invent new stuff now.

NemoNobody 1y ago
I just saw your comment as I was leaving here - you are right I'm just begining to realize exactly what you stated, despite my own ranting AI, automation and all without actually working with any LLMs for several months - jumped into a smaller project last week and I realized that essentially none of the limits that I thought I had were even there anymore. Weeks of work and actual human activity down to days - days of working, down to minutes. I'm trying to retrain how I think - otherwise, the sub 4 year old future creators will be so far ahead of me. Haha, it's gonna be like building in Fortnite - Millennials had to go no build. Co-Creation WITH an AI - it's actually a huge shift, then it's as you said, so easy to build new stuff.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago

Isn't the DMCA already supposed to cover this type of situation? I can't tell from this article what was actually going on, unfortunately.

badlibrarian 1y ago
Indeed they could've structured the whole project to give them DMCA protection but they chose not to. They truly thought copyright didn't apply. Then doubled down when pressed, just like the book lawsuit. They had a number of ways to avoid this problem entirely and the fact that they didn't yet again brings Brewster's judgement into question. He's a sweet guy but clearly not an operations or business guy. He's at retirement age and has an opportunity to do the right thing. Hopefully clearing these lawsuits will open up some options.
braiamp 1y ago
They have exceptions to several categories of IP https://archive.org/about/dmca.php https://archive.org/about/dmca.php Also, they have a policy already https://help.archive.org/help/rights/ https://help.archive.org/help/rights/ Unless you are claiming that they don't follow it, and this case, nor the one before, rights holders included in their cases that they tried to report them via those.

ayaros 1y ago

I guess things could be worse? The Internet Archive is too precious of a resource for humanity to lose. I still fear its days are numbered. I don't think non-technical people appreciate it, or are even aware of its existence, in the same way as Wikipedia.

miki123211 1y ago
I'm a technical person, and not a fan of copyright by any means, and I don't appreaciate it either. To be clear, I appreciate the concept of an "Internet Archive", but the current organization / execution / management is absolutely atrocious.
- NemoNobody 1y ago
  Nah, it's like the wild West - I'll hold IA accountable ONLY for CP - ONLY. If corpos want there shit off the site - they should have to send someone to take that down - every single times the whole process, always on them. The IA is just like a big box with a copy of everything in another box. Boxes aren't bad bc I put something bad into a box - this is a little more nuanced than that
- remus 1y ago
  > To be clear, I appreciate the concept of an "Internet Archive", but the current organization / execution / management is absolutely atrocious. A pretty harsh take imo. I think they achieve a huge amount with a relatively small team and tiny budget.
- ayaros 1y ago
  I just meant I appreciate it as resource for all kinds of information, and as an invaluable backup of the web. The internet should be a repository of all human knowledge and culture; all information and media should (at least eventually) be free as part of the common heritage of mankind. Sites like Wikipedia and IA are a partial realization of this dream. They aren't perfect, for sure, but we need them, and we need more sites like them. I fear too many take these things for granted.
- mwcampbell 1y ago

NoNameHaveI 1y ago

There's an easy solution to this: just move hosting to and register in the Marshall Islands where there is effectively no copyright enforcement. It is difficult to threaten someone with a lawsuit when the law they cite is not enforced.

criddell 1y ago
Moving the IA to the Marshall Islands is your idea of an easy solution?
roywiggins 1y ago
The Internet Archive has substantial physical presence in the United States: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bay-area-warehouse-internet-archive-19858332.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bay-area-warehouse-inter...
ronsor 1y ago
The Marshall Islands does not even have a copyright law.
IshKebab 1y ago
Ha I'm sure their internet connectivity is excellent. And even if it was, you think a country with a population of 42k is somehow immune to political pressure?
RiverCrochet 1y ago
The forthcoming "Block BEARD" act in the U.S. will soon enable rights holders to apply for foreign sites to be blocked (at the IP level I believe) on piracy grounds. But hosting it there long-term would still have value even if U.S. users couldn't easily get to it. Access would be legal when copyrights expire and everything becomes public domain. Therefore, above, long-term means long-long-long-term: enough time for all U.S. copyrights to expire under the current law, which would be about 250 years. This of course assumes no U.S. copyright reform, no expansion of the current copyright law, and that U.S. law/authority/power continues to exist in its current form. Do you think such an archive could be kept alive that long? Here are some potential issues: - Literal piracy (e.g. pirates coming to shore) - Storage of data for 250 years (metal rusts, dvds melt/warp, paper is not data dense) - Climate change - Undersea cable cuts - Nuclear war - Technological evolution (will networking and storage look the same in 50, 100, 200 years)

pessimizer 1y ago

If I had to guess, I'd say that the settlement was a lot closer to $41K than one would think, and that's why it's being kept quiet. Otherwise, the labels saw themselves either losing a famous copyright case in the age of LLM threats to copyright, or winning a famous copyright case in an awkward fashion that made people far less sympathetic to them. People are on copyright holders' side in the battle with LLMs. Either winning or losing this case would be poison.

NemoNobody 1y ago
Haha - only people that don't have experience with AI. When the NYT sued OpenAI - I emailed the Times that if it's between the Times or AI, we don't need the NYT anymore. I want UBI from the AI companies - if they can provide its bc they actually did deliver something that might as well be a god - how they get there - I will forgive, soooo much, almost anything if you think about what AGI actually is. If I were Sam, I'd never stop talking about it either - for most people, ChatGPT is already "alive" more than can understand that it isn't. Haha, in a few years, ask a Gen Alpha if they'd give up AI - fpr copyright law, haha
badlibrarian 1y ago
The settlement was beating them down and getting them to remove millions of items and police things going forward. Things are still disappearing left and right. Huge damage was done to the culture by Brewster's ill-advised, hardcore stance that played right into the hands of corporate interests.

qingcharles 1y ago

Seems like a lot of stuff is being purged from (at least) the search index lately? https://www.reddit.com/r/internetarchive/comments/1nk4pwt/cant_find_or_search_for_archived_cds_on_internet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/internetarchive/comments/1nk4pwt/ca...

textfiles 1y ago

Hope everyone's enjoying the Internet Archive!

badlibrarian 1y ago
[flagged]

djoldman 1y ago

I'm interested to know if last year's book publisher settlement cost will be reflected in IA's public filings. I assume they'll file a 990 in november: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943242767 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943...

ilamont 1y ago
Thanks for sharing that. 2023 data: Revenue: $23,678,074 Expenses: $32,674,667 Net Income: -$8,996,593 Net Assets: -$3,530,018 Liabilities and expenses have likely grown in the last 18 months. IA may have gained some additional donations, but a lot of people are turned off by Kahle's doubling down on courtroom fights with copyright owners, even if he takes $0 in salary. No organization can keep this up unless there is an ace in its back pocket.

gojomo 1y ago

Imminent Death of the Archive Averted, Film at 11.

MomsAVoxell 1y ago

Why isn't the Internet Archive a function of the Library of Congress, anyone know? Seems to me that IA should be very well funded by us all.

SXX 1y ago
Because we don't want it be shutdown because some political figure dislike that it archived something they don't like?
- MomsAVoxell 1y ago
  But isn’t the purpose of the Library of Congress to avoid that scenario?
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    If that’s the purpose of the Library of Congress, they failed.

elcapi_092 1y ago

Ajjdem

Aeolun 1y ago

I’m not funding them just so they can decide to give my money to Sony. There’s much more direct and beneficial ways of doing so. Seriously, if you are going to challenge this kind of shit actually challenge it.

KnuthIsGod 1y ago

The Internet Archive has unfortunately turned into a cross between a poorly organised archive and a pirate site.

koolala 1y ago
How do they financially benefit from pirate material?
- badlibrarian 1y ago
  By putting banner ads at the top asking for donations. This very lawsuit was provoked by tweeting out links to Frank Sinatra records as part of a fund raising campaign. Also, the existence of pirated material fuels the growth of the site. Few people go there for the cool weird stuff. Find something old and amazing and blogged about: 12 views, 10 from bots. Now search for Nintendo games.

Bender 1y ago

How does IA get picked on but YT does not? I can type in any music artist or album I can think of with the word playlist and get a full playlist. With exception of the YT channels owned by the publisher or artist I am highly skeptical YT own even 1% of the music on their site. Most of the music I run across seems to be just random YT user accounts and the music has been there for years. For the record I am not complaining, it just seems very biased to me as in IA probably do not have as many lawyers, as much bureaucracy, connections and money as YT making them an easier target but I am just guessing if that is the reason.

bstsb 1y ago
because youtube has Content ID. they faced the wrath of copyright holders years back, when they were small and lacked real profit, but now pretty much all videos with music in them are automatically claimed - so the big labels get money
- Bender 1y ago
  Hrmm so maybe IA could implement this type of identification.